Mayor Bloomberg has put a freeze on all new city hiring to help bridge a projected budget deficit in the next fiscal year, beginning July 1. Photo: WireImage

At about the very moment Gov. Chris Christie was saying that “now is not my time,” a new poll surfaced that demonstrated what might have been. Echoing Marlon Brando under a headline of “CHRISTIE COULDA’ BEEN A CONTENDER,” a Quinnipiac University survey found that the New Jersey governor would have started with a share of the top spot in the GOP field and defeated President Obama in a head-to-head matchup.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

We’ll never know if Christie had the right stuff to go all the way, but his decision not to try is a disappointment. The clamor for him illustrated the belief among many voters, not all of them Republican, that America can do better than Obama or Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and the rest of the GOP gaggle.

Christie would have been a double-edged sword in some ways, but his passion and center-right reforms in deep-blue New Jersey were an attractive profile, especially for the independent and swing voters who decide elections. As he showed again yesterday, he is refreshingly blunt and has the record to back up the tough talk.

In fact, even as he was bowing out, he made the case against Obama better than the GOP candidates have so far. And he did it in a few off-the-cuff comments late in his press conference.

“There’s no substitute for knowing how to lead,” he said in response to a question. “Everything else you can be taught. You can’t be taught how to lead and make decisions.”

He went on to say that overall, Obama has “failed the American people because he’s failed that absolute litmus test to be president of the United States, and that’s to know how to lead and decide, and he hasn’t done that.”

A minute later, he gave a quick critique of the Republican candidates. He cited the litany of the most serious problems — debt, deficit, tax code, America’s standing in the world, entitlements, opportunity — and said these are the things that should be driving the campaign.

But “I don’t think they’re doing that yet,” he said of the GOP candidates.

Christie is spot on with both points. The economy is dead, scandals are rising like floodwaters around the White House, and Obama is happy to lead from behind at home and abroad, yet nobody in the GOP effectively calls him on it. Instead, the campaign has been reduced to a series of stilted debates, which by nature are heavily structured and scripted.

Romney has survived by playing it safe, Perry has been defined by his stumbling performances and Cain is rising because he’s funny and sharp. None has more than 25 percent support, and their attacks on each other are a zero-sum game that makes them all look small.

Meanwhile, the national mood grows more sour as the jobs picture remains gloomy and the stock market behaves like a yo-yo. Most days, the wheels seem to be coming off the world.

America needs a leader — someone who has the courage to lead from the front, get things done and bring the nation together. Maybe we should advertise on a milk carton for one, because so far, a leader of the pack is missing.

The face of city pols’ new friends

They don’t spout the madness of Roseanne Barr, who called for beheading bankers and putting the wealthy in re-education camps, but top New York pols are flirting dangerously with radicals.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Comptroller John Liu, both Democrats and likely mayoral candidates, believe the road to City Hall is paved with pandering. Their bidding war includes trying to outdo each other in supporting the Wall Street protesters over the NYPD.

The protesters have no coherent demands, and many trot out tiresome crap about Gestapo cops and fascist government, but that hasn’t stopped Quinn and Liu from taking their side. Although Quinn said the NYPD has to “maintain order,” she told The Wall Street Journal that “the important thing is to make sure that law-enforcement agents are respecting the basic rights of protesters, and that we investigate any accusations of improper conduct.”

That’s “the important thing”? Tellingly, she did not call for investigations of demonstrators who are camping out in a public park, blocking streets and shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge. Her sympathies are appalling.

Liu told the Journal the protests reflect “abandonment of the middle class,” and said they “should not be stopped and should be heard loud and clear by all policy makers.”

This is bizarre. The mayhem will cost middle-class taxpayers millions of dollars in police and court costs, even though many protesters came to the city simply to demonstrate, with one man saying he quit his job to do so. Others are students and the usual activists who show up at every crisis, real or imagined, to chant “power-to-the-people” nonsense. Perhaps they have trust funds or unemployment benefits instead of jobs.

Real New Yorkers are busy working to pay the taxes that pay the cops and Quinn’s and Liu’s salaries.

If the pols won’t defend the city’s best interests and its citizens, they should resign and join their soul mates behind the barricades.

Stamp out this bad idea

Facing bankruptcy, the Postal Service has found a new way to fleece the public: postage stamps of Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg, Lindsay Lohan and other celebutards. The rule that people must be dead at least five years before they can grace a stamp has been scrapped in a bid to raise cash.

If this is the best the post office can do, it deserves to go bust.

Mayor’s memory doesn’t serve

Assuming Mayor Bloomberg was telling the truth on the witness stand Monday, the long list of routine things he couldn’t remember paints a picture of creeping senility. His answers were especially odd regarding the departure of a former deputy mayor.

On Aug. 4, his office put out a statement lavishing praise on Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith while announcing he was “leaving to pursue private-sector opportunities.”

A month later, after The Post broke the story that Goldsmith had actually been fired because he had been arrested in a domestic dispute, Bloomberg confessed he intentionally misled the public.

“I make no apologies,” he said, justifying the false information by saying he didn’t believe it was “right” to “bring more suffering to the Goldsmith family.”

Yet Monday, under oath in the criminal trial of a former campaign aide, the mayor denied ever misleading the public, insisting again that Goldsmith quit to go to the private sector.

Is there a doctor in the house?

Mag has it both ways

A magazine headline offers this advice to investors: “Either We Are In For A Lehman Crash Or A Big Rebound” Thanks for the clarity.